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THE JOHN CALVIN McNAIR LECTURES

TIME, MATTER, AND VALUES

THE JOHN CALVIN McNAIR LECTURES

FRANCIS H. SMITH: God Manifest in the Material Universe.

FRANCIS LANDEY PATTON: Authority and Religion.

DAVID STARR JORDAN: The Stability of Truth.

HENRY VAN DYKE: The Poetry of Nature.

ARTHUR TWINING HADLEY: Some Influences in Modern

Philosophic Thought.

FRANCIS G. PEABODY: Christian Life in the Modern World.
GEORGE EDGAR VINCENT: The Social Vision.
JOHN DEWEY: Philosophy and Politics.
FREDERICK J. E. WOODBRIDGE: The Purpose of History.
HUGH BLACK: The Great Questions of Life.
EDWIN GRANT CONKLIN: The Direction of Human Evolution.
PAUL SHOREY: Plato's Relation to the Religious Problem.
CHARLES ALLEN DINSMORE: Religious Certitude in an Age

of Science.

ROSCOE POUND: Law and Morals.
WILLIAM Louis POTEAT: Can a Man Be a Christian
CHARLES REYNOLDS BROWN: A Wording Faith.
THORNTON WHALING: Science and Religion Today.
HARRIS E. KIRK: Stars, Atoms, and God.
ROBERT ANDREWS MILLIKAN: Time, Matter, and Values.

THE UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA PRESS

CHAPEL HILL, N. C.

THE BAKER AND TAYLOR COMPANY, NEW YORK

OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS, LONDON

MARUZEN-KABUSHIKI-KAISHA, TOKYO

EDWARD EVANS & SONS, LTD., SHANGHAI

D. B. CENTEN'S WETENSCHAPPELIJKE BOEKHANDEL,
AMSTERDAM

TIME, MATTER, AND VALUES

BY

ROBERT ANDREWS MILLIKAN, PhD.

'T

CHAPEL HILL

THE UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA PRESS
1932

COPYRIGHT, 1)532, BY
THE UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINAjPRESS*^ .

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA BY
THE SEEMAN PRESS, DURHAM, NORTH CAROLINA

THE McNAIR LECTURES

The John Calvin McNair Lectures tuere
founded through a bequest made by Rev. John
Calvin McNair, of the class of 1849. This
bequest became available to the University in
1906. The extract from the will referring to
the foundation is as follows:

"As soon as the interest accruing thereon
shall by 'said Trustees be deemed sufficient
they shall employ some able Scientific Gentle-
man to deliver before the students then in at-
tendance at said University, a course of lectures,
the object of which lectures shall be to show the
mutual bearing of science and theology upon
each other, and to prove the existence and at-
tributes, as far as may be, of God from nature.
The lectures, which must be performed by a
member of some one of the Evangelic denomina-
tions of Christians, must be published within
twelve months after delivery, either in pam-
phlet or boof^ form."

PREFACE

following pages represent the au-
A thor's attempt to give in very brief
form some of the most significant changes
in fundamental concepts which have re-
sulted from the extraordinary advances made
in recent years in the field of experimental
physics. These changes obviously have im-
portant bearings not only on physics but on
the whole outlook of mankind toward na-
ture, and hence toward life. They show
that the great blunder which the physics of
the past has made has consisted in extending
its generalizations with undue assurance into
fields in which they have not been experi-
mentally tested, that is, in treating these
generalizations as fixed, universally ap-
plicable principles instead of as essentially
working hypotheses. This has led in the
past to a dogmatism in science which is at
bottom indistinguishable from dogmatism in
[vii]

PREFACE

theology or in any other field; for dog-
matism in any field is merely assertiveness
without knowledge. But the physicist has
recently, through his blunders and his new
experimental findings, learned a lesson of
open-mindedness which cannot fail to in-
fluence other fields of thought. Philosophy
and theology, as well as biology and psy-
chology, are sure to profit from it.

[ viii ]

TABLE OF CONTENTS

PAGE

PREFACE vii

I. NEW IDEAS ABOUT TIME 3

II. NEW IDEAS ABOUT MATTER 32

III. NEW IDEAS ABOUT VALUES 68

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

1. Probable Egyptian Sun-dial of the Period of

Mcrnepthah 8

2. Ancient Egyptian Sun-Clock 10

3. Egyptian Water-Clock of the Period of Amenhotep

III (about B. C. 1400) 12

4. Apparatus for Experiments on "The Viscosity

of Gases" 36

5. The "Oil-Drop Experiment'* 43

6. Young's Experiment 50

7. The Difference in the Behaviors in a Magnetic Field

of Alpha, Beta, and Gamma Rays from Radium. . 55

8. Photograph of X-rays: Long tracks with large for-

ward component; sphere tracks; cylindrical X-ray
beam, 0.5 mm. in diameter, has traversed 8 x io 8
cm. copper. Final pressure 19 cm 59

[ix]

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

FIGURE PAGE

9. Diffraction Pattern produced by passing a narrow
beam of X-rays (ether waves) through a thin
crystal of zinc blend parallel to the trigonal axis 62

10. Diffraction Pattern produced by passing a narrow

beam of electrons (particles) through a thin film
of crystallized aluminum 63

11. Diffraction Pattern produced by passing a narrow

beam of X-rays (ether waves) through zinc blend
parallel to a cubic axis 64

12. Diffraction Pattern produced by passing a beam of

electrons (particles) through a thin mica crystal. . 65

13. X-ray (or ether- wave) Diffraction Figure produced

by a powder or thin foil in which the elementary
minute crystals are distributed at random 66

14. The Corresponding Diffraction Pattern obtained when

a beam of electrons (particles) passes through thin
gold foils in which the elementary gold crystals
again have a random distribution 67

TIME, MATTER, AND VALUES

CHAPTER I

NEW IDEAS ABOUT TIME

TO THE ordinary modern man nothing
is simpler than the idea of time. He
had a Waterbury watch for a Christmas
present by the time he was six. He timed
horse races or hundred-yard dashes or bi-
cycle speeds to a fifth of a second with a
stop watch before he was twelve. Through
all his life he has gone to classes, eaten his
meals, caught his trains or missed them
by the clock. To him, therefore, time is a
perfectly simple, completely understood,
common sense concept which has always
been with the race and always will be.

But is this complacent, common sense
view of the ordinary hard-headed citizen
sound or unsound? Or was, perhaps, the
Mad Hatter in Alice in Wonderland nearer
right when he said

3

TIME, MATTER, AND VALUES

"If you knew Time as well as I do, you
wouldn't talk about wasting it. It's him."

"I don't know what you mean," said Alice.

"Of course you don't," the Hatter said,
tossing his head contemptuously. "I dare say
you never even spoke to Time!"

"Perhaps not," Alice cautiously replied;
"but I know I have to beat time when I
learn music."

"Ah! That accounts for it," said the Hat-
ter, "He won't stand beating. Now if you
only kept on good terms with him, he'd do
almost anything you liked with the clock.
For instance, suppose it were nine o'clock in
the morning, just time to begin lessons:
you'd only have to whisper a hint to Time,
and round goes the clock in a twinkling!
Half -past one, time for dinner!"

("I only wish it was," the March Hare said
to itself in a whisper.)

"That would be grand, certainly," said
Alice thoughtfully; "but then I shouldn't
be hungry for it, you know."
4

NEW IDEAS ABOUT TIME

"Not at first, perhaps," said the Hatter;
"but you could keep it to half-past one as
long as you liked."

Now the question I am raising tonight is,
How mad was the Hatter anyway when he
gave the sort of changeable, undependable,
capricious qualities to Time which we as-
sign to personality, and, playing deliciously
upon our current phrases "beating time" and
"murdering time," insisted on addressing
time as Him? Who is the nearer right, the
Mad Hatter or the common sense citizen ?

Well, at any rate, this common sense cit-
izen hasn't always been right. Let me illus-
trate first how penetrating a judgment he
has sometimes had by quoting from Robert
Recorded "Master and Scholar" dialogues
published in the year 1556, thirteen years
after the first publication of the Copernican
thesis, which was: "That the earth not only
moveth circularlye about his own centre, but
also may be, yea and is continually out of
the precise centre 38 hundredth thousand

5

TIME, MATTER, AND VALUES

miles." This thesis is met with the typical
reaction by the scholar, who says, "Nay syr
in good faith, I desire not to heare such
vaine phantasies, so farre against common
reason, and repugnante to the consente of
all the learned multitude of Wryters, and
therefore let it passe for ever, and a daye
longer."

Nor, indeed, were such common sense
judgments confined to the practical Eng-
lish, for some French verses translated in
1591, forty-eight years after Copernicus' pub-
lication similarly assert satirically,

"Those clerks that think think how absurd a

jest!

That neither heavens nor stars do turn at all,
Nor dance around this great round earthly ball,
But the earth itself, this massy globe of our's,
Turn's round about once every twice twelve

hours!

And we resemble land-bred navvies
New brought aboard to venture on the seas;
Who at first launching from the shore suppose
The ship stands still and that the firm earth

goes." 6

NEW IDEAS ABOUT TIME

What are the historic facts, then, about this
idea of time ? Here are some of them.

Like much else in this changing world,
time, as you and I understand and use it, is a
relatively new idea, just beginning to come
into use in the fifteenth and sixteenth cen-
turies, A.D. But in order not to be misunder-
stood, I must explain just what I mean by
the phrase "time as you and I understand
and use it."

For certain limited types of purposes, time
began to be, not only used, but accurately
measured at the very dawn of history. In-
deed the first reliable date in history, accord-
ing to Breasted, was 4241 B.C., or 6173 years
ago, and it is fixed by observations made in
Egypt upon the star Sirius. Civilization pre-
sumably arose in Egypt, but eons before its
rise, indeed from the very first appearance
of life on the earth, the day was clearly
marked by nature herself as the most fund-
amental, and the most simple, measure of
time; for physiological processes of all sorts

TIME, MATTER, AND VALUES

in plant, insect, fish, bird, beast, and human
reveal a period determined by the rising of
the sun. But from that point of view that
other unit, the year, has almost equal claim,
for ever since "the sap began to stir in April"
the return of Spring has been marked as a
natural measure of time.

Now the beginnings of science are nearly
always found in the first steps taken toward
refining and making more precise natural
but inaccurately defined concepts like those
of the day and the year, and it was in this
case the year rather than the day that first
'received in Egypt an exact quantitative defi-
nition. For the annual inundations of the
Nile happened to coincide very nearly with
the heliacal rising of Sirius, that is, the rising
just before the dawn, so that his first appear-
ance on the horizon in advance of the sun
was taken to announce the new year, and
this appearance (which, otherwise stated,
marks quite accurately the annual return of
the sun to a fixed point in the heavens) en-
8

Fie. i. Probable Egyptian sun-dial of the period of
Merncpthah. Found at Gezer in South Palestine. From
Borchardt, "Altagypttsche-Zeitmessung," 1920, by courtesy
of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

NEW IDEAS ABOUT TIME

abled those early Egyptians in the very dawn
of history to measure the duration of the
year as 365 days. In the matter of the length
of the year, then, there is nothing new about
time at all.

Also, with the foregoing start, the Egypt-
ians oriented their temples and pyramids so
that some of them at least became time meas-
uring instruments. For example, the Great
Pyramid was so carefully placed as to serve
as an instrument for the determination of
the time of the equinoxes, for on these days
its east and west faces were just grazed by
the rays of the rising or setting sun. More
than this, the Egyptians definitely had sun-
dials or sun clocks, one form of which, quite
like the conventional sun-dial, is shown in
Figure i, while another form is seen in
Figure 2.

It will be correctly inferred from these il-
lustrations that the modern division of the
day into twelve hours, and of the hour into
sixty minutes, and of the minute into sixty

9

TIME, MATTER, AND VALUES

seconds, comes down to us from the earliest
Egyptian times. Indeed, the antiquity of the
origins of both our present time-measure-
ment-system and our angle-measurement-
system is attested by the fact that these are
the only surviving relics of the old sex-
agesimal notation which prevailed gener-
ally before the decimal system was finally
adopted.

But at night what did the Egyptians do
about time measurement? They had two
solutions. The priests had rather elaborate
categories of stars, the positions of which told
the time at a given season. This system,
however, must have been so awkward be-
cause of the rapidly changing relations of
solar and sidereal time that it is likely that it
was used only by the experts.

The second method involved the use ol
the Egyptian water-clock illustrated in Fig-
ure 3. The water was drained out through
a small pipe, and the form of the vessel was
so chosen as to give an equal fall of water

10

FIG. 2. Ancient Egyptian Sun-Clocl(. The shadow of the
crosspiece (A A), /timed toward the east in the morning
and toward the west affer noon, indicated the honr on the
arm (BIJ). From Breasted, "Ancient Times," by courtesy
of Ginn and Co.

NEW IDEAS ABOUT TIME

per hour. These Egyptian water clocks had
enough volume to enable the water to flow
all night. The Greek and Roman variants
of this device, called Clepsydra, were actually
used chiefly to set a limit to the speeches in
the courts of justice, hence the terms aquam
dare, to give speaking time, or aquam per-
dere, to waste time.

But in spite of the profound knowledge
of stellar movement and their time-measur-
ing capabilities herewith revealed, and in
spite of the ingenuity shown by the expert
in the development and perfection of water
clocks, I repeat that in ancient times neither
the expert nor the man on the streets had
ever been introduced to time as we moderns
know it. No Roman or Greek doctor ever
counted his patient's pulse or took his tem-
perature to find how sick he was. 1 Both

*This is strictly true with reference to the temperature
but needs this qualification with respect to the pulse beat.
There is evidence that the clepsydra was sometimes used by
Greek doctors for pulse-counting, awkward and inexact
though it was for such a purpose in comparison with our
watches.

II

TIME, MATTER, AND VALUES

watches and thermometers came with the
ushering in, some three or four hundred
years ago, of a new era. In the Roman Em-
pire the ordinary man measured time at
night, as those familiar with the New Testa-
ment well know, by the first or the second
crowing of the cock.

The Olympic victor led the field but no-
body knew whether he won the hundred
yard dash in nine, ten, eleven or forty sec-
onds. Nowhere in the ancient world could
a common citizen be late to breakfast on a
cloudy morning, since without the sun there
could be no definite breakfast hour. If the
family planned a picnic no barometer fore-
told the lifting of the clouds or warned that
rain was imminent. If one of the children
was anemic no blood count could indicate
that fact for the ancient world had no micro-
scopes, nor telescopes either. Those were
indeed simple days, for all our most impor-
tant and most familiar measuring instru-
ments, such as the clock, the barometer, the

12

I ; io. 3. Egyptian water-clocl{ of the period of Amenho-
tep III (about B. C. 1400). The water was drained
out through a small pipe and the twelve hours of the
night were indicated by its level on scales inscribed on
the inner face. Pound in fragments in the temple of
Karna1(. From Horchardt, " Altiigyptische-Zeitmessung,"
1920, by courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

NEW IDEAS ABOUT TIME

thermometer, the telescope, the microscope,
all of these first came into use in the six-
teenth and seventeenth centuries A.D. Why ?
Because a new conception of the signif-
icance of time began then for the first time
to arise in human thought a conception
that made practically every physical constant
dependent upon a time-measurement with a
clock or a watch or its equivalent. ( Galileo,
sitting there in front of his inclined plane
and his marbles, and first feeling the neces-
sity of measuring the time-rate-of -change in
their positions and in their velocities as they
rolled down the plane this typifies the
whole new idea, for here was laid the basis
of mechanics. \ To lay the first stone in the
foundations of that mechanics it was neces-
sary to have a time piece, and Galileo him-
self is recognized as the inventor of the pen-
dulum clock although he only used it prac-
tically, so we are told, for counting the pulse
of his patients the same patients whose
temperatures he invented the thermometer
13

TIME, MATTER, AND VALUES

in order to be able to measure. The pulse
itself, however, under normal conditions can
serve, and I believe actually did serve him,
as a short-interval time piece.

However, the generally accepted history
of the introduction of mechanical clocks is as
follows: "They seem to have begun to come
into use in the thirteenth century. If in-
vented earlier they were merely curiosities
and they remained practically this until
about 1600. A clock was actually put up in
a former clock tower at Westminster with
some great bells in 1288. These bells were
sold or rather gambled away, it is said, by
Henry VIII. Also a clock very much like
the later pendulum clocks except that it was
driven by a vibrating balance instead of a
pendulum was made for the French King
Charles V in 1379." About 1600 Galileo dis-
covered the isochronism of the pendulum
and although he made no practical use of it
except in inventing the above mentioned in-
strument for measuring pulse beats, actually

NEW IDEAS ABOUT TIME

pendulum clocks came rapidly into general
use immediately thereafter.

But in any event the need of measuring
accurately through short intervals the time-
rate-of-change of position, which is velocity,
and again time-rate-of-change of velocity
which in its turn is acceleration, and which
was found by direct experiment to be an ac-
curate measure of force, this was the need
that Galileo was the first to feel and to set
carefully at work to try to satisfy; and out of
it all came a whole new world concept, or
better, two new world concepts, namely, first,
the concept of the uniformity of nature or
the concept of natural law, and second, the
concept of the continuity of nature, or more
specifically the concept of the necessary con-
tinuity of motion and of change of motion.

Let me try to appraise the significance for
human life of the introduction of these two
ideas. The first, namely, the idea of the uni-
formity of nature is what primarily distin-
guishes the modern world from the ancient.

TIME, MATTER, AND VALUES

It grew out of accurate measurements of
time-rates-of-change with clocks or their
equivalent, measurements the like of which
were never made in the ancient world.
These measurements first established certain
mechanical laws which, if true, rendered the
accurate prediction of some astronomical
events, like eclipses, and some terrestrial
phenomena, like the paths of projectiles, the
stability of structures, the speeds of railway
trains or airplanes, etc., a possibility. The
agreement between such calculations and di-
rect experiment is what in time has con-
vinced the world of the essential correctness
of the Galilean and Newtonian postulates,
at least so far as macroscopic or large-scale
events are concerned. It transformed this
world from one which is at bottom capri-
cious and animistic, as were in fact both the
ancient world and the mediaeval one, to a
world which is dependable, and in part at
least knowable and controllable by man a
stupendous change in outlook and significant
16

NEW IDEAS ABOUT TIME

evidence of the enormous influence of out-
look on human life and conduct.

You will then agree with me that these
ancient and mediaeval worlds had never, in
the language of the Mad Hatter, even been
introduced to Time. The vague, general,
common sense notion of time that prevailed
up to 1600 A.D. needed to be refined, sharp-
ened, and rendered precise through the in-
vention of precision time measuring in-
struments applicable to short time-intervals
before it acquired the power to change man's
thought and life and to create a modern, as
distinct from an ancient or a mediaeval
world.

The second element in the change in the
time-concept that came in about 1600 A.D.
I called above the concept of the continuity
of nature. The Galilean and Newtonian
world saw a constant force like gravitation
producing a constant and continuous rate of
change in velocity. To handle the problems
of that world Newton and Leibnitz invented

17

TIME, MATTER, AND VALUES

the calculus which Newton christened flux-
ions, i.e., flowing or continuous changes. In
a word, the Galilean and Newtonian world is
described by differential equations, its four
independent variables being x, y, z, and t, t
being completely independent of anything
that happens to the observer so far as x, y
and z are concerned, and up to about the be-
ginning of the 20th century this concept
of time as something quite independent of
space coordinates had had an enormous num-
ber of successes and no failures. Our whole
mechanical world governed by mechanical
laws grew out of it. To the man on the
streets and to the man in the laboratory, too,
it was a simple, common sense idea that a
Seth Thomas clock which had been so beau-
tifully adjusted as to come around repeatedly
to 12 midnight when on successive nights a
given star crosses the meridian should tic\ off
absolute seconds. What more could the Mad
Hatter want us to know about time than
that? That was the time of the ipth cen-
18

NEW IDEAS ABOUT TIME

tury which made all measurements depend
in the last analysis upon these three absolute
independent quantities, length, mass, and
time.

Then came in 1887 the famous, Michelson-
Morley experiment which by 1905, as soon as
its experimental correctness had become rec-
ognized, spoiled all this sense of complete-
ness and infallibility in our fundamental
thinking about the absoluteness of time.
What is this Michelson-Morley experiment
and why has it started such a ferment in
physical thinking, a ferment which seeps
down to the masses and causes even the yel-
low journal to attempt to follow the modern
developments in relativity? Let me explain
it by citing a bit of history.

Throughout the whole of the ipth century
we had been building up, also on the basis
of the Galilean-Newtonian postulate of the

continuousness of natural processes, correctly

j
describable by an expression even when

19

TIME, MATTER, AND VALUES

the dx and dt were taken infinitely small, a
wonderfully consistent "natural philosophy"
as to the nature of radiant energy a beauti-
ful wave-theory of light a theory too that
had predicted with extraordinary success
even phenomena of such analytical intricacy
as conical refraction, for example. Anyone
brought up as I was upon Michelson inter-
ferometers and all the manifold variety of
the facts of interference in the fields of light,
heat^and wireless waves, all beautifully pre-
dicted by the ether wave equations and now
familiar to every fifteen-year-old wireless
enthusiast, had no shadow of doubt as to the
fundamental correctness of that wave theory.
This theory required that it be possible, by
noting the time required for a beam of light
to get back to the observer when, on the one
hand, it was sent forth in the direction of
the earth's motion and back by reflection
from a mirror to the observer, and when on
the other hand it was sent a like distance
forth and back at right angles to the earth's

20

NEW IDEAS ABOUT TIME

motion, to find the speed with which the
earth is moving through space. The reason-
ing is altogether simple and direct as the
corresponding imaginary experiments with
sound waves will show. Suppose a man fac-
ing east has a cliff a mile east of him and an-
other cliff a mile south of him. If he emits
a note and, while doing so, runs east to meet
the echo from the east cliff he will obviously
hear it a little before he receives the echo
from the south cliff the distance of which
from him has remained constant. This ex-
periment so described works just as it should
whether tried with sound or with light. It
is essentially the way we actually do, now,
measure the relative speed of approach of
the earth and a star, though in this case the
light is emitted by the star instead of being
reflected from it; but this is not an essential
difference as is shown by measurements on
planets which shine only by reflected light.
We actually measure quite accurately the
rotation period of Saturn by the difference

21

TIME, MATTER, AND VALUES

in the relative times of arrival, or difference
in wave length, of light waves coming from
the limb that is moving toward us and the
limb moving away from us.

But now suppose the observer and the two
cliffs were on a huge moving platform trav-
elling toward the east through still air. Then
the echo from the east cliff would in this
case clearly get back after, not before, the
echo from the south cliff as can easily be
seen by imagining the platform to be moving
with the speed with which sound travels, for
then the sound wave obviously could not
reach the east cliff at all so that the echo
from it would be infinitely delayed. Now
in the Michelson experiment the moving
platform was in fact the earth and he ex-
pected the light echo from the east cliff to
get back after the echo from the south cliff.
But in fact the expected time difference did
not appear. The two echoes got back exactly
at the same time. For twenty years we tried
vainly to "understand" this result but we

22

NEW IDEAS ABOUT TIME

failed completely to get a reasonable expla-
nation of it along classical lines. There was,
and there is now, no understanding of it ex-
cept through giving up the idea of absolute
time and of absolute length and making the
two interdependent concepts. But this over-
throws the rigidity and the theoretical per-
fectness of the whole of mechanics. This is
why relativity interests every one. Specific-
ally, the length of the measuring rod when
it was measuring the distance to the east
cliff, that is, in the direction of motion
through space, was assumed by Lorentz and
FitzGerald to be shorter than when the same
rod was measuring the distance to the south
cliff. In other words its length / depended
upon the speed of its motion through space,

but since speed = -, this meant that / and /,

length and time, were not independent quan-
tities. They might be considered as inde-
pendent for bodies at rest or for bodies in
relative motion with speeds small compared
23

TIME, MATTER, AND VALUES

with the speed of light, but not for bodies
whose relative speeds were comparable with
the speed of light.

It is indeed now no longer customary to
talk about "The Lorentz-FitzGerald shorten-
ing" of the measuring rod in the direction of
motion as I have done above though this is
by far the simplest way of seeing the actual
requirements of the Michelson-Morley ex-
periment with respect to the space and time
concepts. The reason for dropping this mode
of approach is merely that Einstein in 1905
incorporated the results of the Michelson-
Morley experiment into the first postulate of
the special theory of relativity, that is, he gen-
eralized our experimental inability to find a
speed of the earth with respect to the ether
or with respect to space if one prefers that
expression into the postulate that no abso-
lute frame of reference for motion can be
found, the relative motion of two bodies
alone being measurable, the speed of a light
signal always coming out a constant inde-
24

NEW IDEAS ABOUT TIME

pendent of the state of rest or motion of the
body on which it is being measured. This
postulate, precisely like that of the Lorentz-
FitzGerald shortening, denies the possibility
of realizing absolute time or absolute speed
and links time and space together into a
composite space-time concept. So as to leave
no experimental stone unturned in this most
fundamental field, Drs. Roy S. Kennedy and
Edward L. Thorndyke have, during the past
four years, carried out and recently con-
cluded at the Norman Bridge Laboratory at
Pasadena, a most accurate modification of
the Michelson-Morley experiment in which
the length of the two light paths and hence
the two times of travel of the two light
beams are entirely different, instead of being
essentially the same as they have been in all
preceding repetitions of this experiment.
They have thus brought forward a new and
more direct and very exact experimental
proof of the relativity of time as well as of
space.

TIME, MATTER, AND VALUES

Three hundred years, then, after the first
establishment of the mechanical laws upon
which the modern world is built, laws which
take time and space as independent variables,
and which assign continuity to nature by
describing her in terms of differential equa-
tions assumed to be valid no matter how
small the time and space intervals are taken,
these new ipth century discoveries and view-
points begin to raise seriously the question as
to whether the Mad Hatter was not right
when he attributed at bottom variable, even
whimsical, qualities to time.

But it is not the development of relativity
so much as the development of the facts and
the theory of quanta that has given Time the
worst beating. The experimental discoveries
of this century in the fields of photoelectric
effects, Compton effects, X-ray and cosmic
ray effects, and spectroscopic effects, have
practically forced us to describe the physical
world in terms of particles particles or units
of electrical cnarge which we call positive
26

NEW IDEAS ABOUT TIME

and negative electrons, particles or units of
mass which we call protons and electrons,
particles or units of radiant energy which
we call photons, and particles or units of
action (or momentum) which we call
Planck's h units. Such a description of the
physical world cannot be made in terms of
differential equations. Macroscopic phenom-
ena, in which large numbers of these units
are involved, can of course still be described
in terms of such differential equations just
as may the outflow of sand from a truck
load of it, for here the units the sand
grains are so small that they do not appear
as such to the rough measuring instruments
which we use. It is only in the field of
macroscopic phenomena that the Galilean
and Newtonian mechanical laws have had
such amazing successes during the past cen-
turies. But in this 20th century we have
been studying for the first time microscopic
phenomena, phenomena in which only one
or two, or at any rate, a relatively small num-
27

TIME, MATTER, AND VALUES

her of these units have been involved and in
all such cases we have found the mechanical
laws breaking down, thus showing the ex-
treme danger of extending generalizations
outside the range in which observational
checks have been or can be obtained.

The final result to date of all these studies
of microscopic phenomena is summed up in
the so-called Heisenberg principle of uncer-
tainty which says in essence that it is impos-
sible to increase the accuracy of measure-
ment of the velocity of a particle without by
this very observational act introducing an
uncertainty into the determination of the
position of the particle, the law governing
this uncertainty being that the product of
the uncertainty in the measurement of the
velocity (more accurately the momentum)
by the uncertainty in the measurement of
the position is always equal to Planck's con-
stant h. Another way of stating the same
thing is that the product of the uncertainty
in the measurement of the energy of a par-
28

NEW IDEAS ABOUT TIME

ticle by the uncertainty in the measurement
of the time at which it had that energy is
again equal to Planck's h.

From two quite different points of view
then, from the observed facts of relativity
and from the observed facts of quanta, the
first obtained from studying bodies moving
with extraordinarily high speeds, speeds
comparable with the speed of light, the sec-
ond obtained from studying microscopic
phenomena or unitary elementary processes,
physics has come to the conclusion that
velocity and position, or energy and time, or
more simply, length and time, are not at
bottom independent of each other, in other
words that there is no such thing as absolute
time, nor indeed as absolute length, and
therefore that in the world of elementary
processes there is no possibility of predicting,
to use now old-time terminology, what is go-
ing to happen to a particular electron, or
atom, or light-quant at a particular future in-
stant of time, from any observations of what
29

TIME, MATTER, AND VALUES

has happened to this electron, atom or light-
quant at any preceding instant.

This means that philosophic determinism
which has always been a presumptuous and
a scientifically unwarranted generalization
is now shown by experimental physics itself
to be a false generalization. How La Place
would turn in his grave if he knew what
had happened to it.

Let me close with a quotation from the
Oxford physicist, F. A. Lindemann.

"The recognition of the inadequacy of the
old space-time coordinates has introduced a
new and resilient factor into the hard and
unyielding mechanism of classical physics.
The harsh sequence of cause and effect has
lost its power, the implacable rule of deter-
minism its rigour. The narrow crust in
which our predecessors encased our mental
processes has been breached and we are en-
titled henceforward in the order of our
physical concepts to question the grim pre-
30

NEW IDEAS ABOUT TIME

eminence accorded by age-long consent to
Timer

Perhaps the Mad Hatter had a reason for
calling time Him.

CHAPTER II

NEW IDEAS ABOUT MATTER

T^ORGETTING Greek speculations,
JL which were not based either upon ac-
curate observational data or upon careful
analytical reasoning, and which therefore
had a nebulosity and a mystical generality
about them quite akin to the conjectures of
modern occultism or to the sweeping and
uncritical assertions of both ancient and
modern East Indian theosophical writing,
the real development of modern atomic and
molecular theory may be said to begin with
the discovery of Boyle's law about 1660.1 As
has now become well known through the
well-nigh universal use of pneumatic tires,
Boyle found experimentally that the pres-
sure which at a given temperature a given
weight of confined air exerts against the con-
taining walls is directly proportional to the

NEW IDEAS ABOUT MATTER

density of the contained air or inversely pro-
portional to the volume which it occupies.
This result was interpreted, at least as early
as 1738 by Daniel Bernoulli, in terms of the
assumed motions or impacts against the con-
taining walls of the contained gaseous par-
ticles, so that Bernouilli assumed an atomic
or discrete-particle theory of the constitution
of gases. This so-called kinetic theory of
gas pressures was developed further by Wat-
erson, Joule and Maxwell in England, Kro-
nig, Clausins and Boltzmann in Germany
during the middle and latter part of the nine-
teenth century, and by the end of that cen-
tury the theory had had so many successes as
to have commanded the adherence of the
great majority of physicists, the two most no-
table quantitative evidences for its correctness
having been brought forward, the first by
Joule in 1851, the second by Maxwell about
1870. These two bits of evidence are worth
presenting somewhat in detail.
Joule was the first to see and to prove that
33

TIME, MATTER, AND VALUES

it is possible to compute the actual velocities
of the molecular motions from the densities
of the contained gases and the observed
pressures exerted by them.\ This possibility
grew out of the discovery of what we call
Avogadro's law (about 1815), a generaliza-
tion from a large number of experimental
facts of the following sort. Sixteen grams of
oxygen confined in a given vessel are actu-
ally found by experiment to exert, at the
same temperature, the same pressure as is
exerted in the same vessel by one gram of
hydrogen, but the atomic weight, or weight-
combining power of oxygen, also is sixteen
times that of hydrogen. Avogadro's gen-
eralization was then that the pressures ex-
erted by a given number of molecules of
different gases within the same vessel is in-
dependent of the type of molecule exerting
the pressure; or when different gases exert
the same pressures they possess the same
number of molecules per cc. This actually
means, if gas pressures are due to molecular

34

NEW IDEAS ABOUT MATTER

impacts, that at a given temperature each
molecule hits the wall with the same strik-
ing power, whether it be a light molecule
like hydrogen or a very heavy one like mer-
cury, and this means that the kinetic energy
of agitation of the molecules of gases is the
same at a given temperature whether the
moving molecule be a heavy one or a light
one, and this means in turn that a light
molecule like hydrogen, in order to have the
same kinetic energy ( l / 2 mv 2 ) as the oxygen
molecule, 16 times as massive, must move
just four times as fast. What Joule did, then,
in 1851 was to combine this kinetic theory
of gases with Boyle's law and Avogadro's
rule and to deduce the actual velocities of
molecular motions in gases, and the result
came out most surprisingly high. According
to this calculation, the hydrogen molecules
in an ordinary room (and every room will
have some hydrogen in it) are hitting our
cheeks with the velocity of a rifle bullet from
a high power gun, namely, a velocity of

35

TIME, MATTER, AND VALUES

about a mile a second. More strange than
that, we like just that kind of treatment
and complain if we do not get it. If the
average energy of agitation becomes very
much greater than that we feel uncomfort-
ably warm, and if very much less than that
uncomfortably cold. In a word, to revert to
the language used by the physicist, the mean
kinetic energy of the particles of different
gases is the same whether the particle is a
light one like hydrogen, or a very heavy one
like mercury. This means, of course, that a
given temperature in a gas means simply a
given mean striking power, or kinetic en-
ergy? of its molecules no matter whether
these molecules are heavy or light. All this,
then, speaks strongly for a particle theory of
matter.

So much for the discoveries of Avogadro,
Joule and Clausins in the first half of the
nineteenth century. The discovery of Max-
well, twenty years later (about 1870) is
harder to describe, but it constitutes one of

36

FIG. 4. Apparatus for Experiments on "The Viscosity
of Gases." The apparatus shown was constructed at
King's College, London. The experiments were carried
out at Maxwell's home at 8 Palace Gardens, Kensing-
ton, and led to the tonclttsion that "the coefficient of
internal friction is independent of the density of any
particular l(ind of gas/' and "that the viscosity is di-
rectly proportional to the temperature measured from
the absolute zero of the air thermometer."

NEW IDEAS ABOUT MATTER

the most beautiful illustrations in history of
the power of analysis to predict new and
theretofore undreamed of behaviors. On the
basis of the foregoing kinetic theory he com-
puted that the viscosity of a gas should show
the well-nigh unbelievable behavior of being
the same at a high density as at a low one,
and then he himself showed experimentally
that this theretofore unknown and unex-
pected result is actually true, f He himself
directly proved, for example, that a horizon-
tal disk oscillating in air at 10 mm. pressure
is damped down as rapidly as when the
pressure is 76 cm. or even 760 cm. Figure 4
shows the historic device with which Max-
well carried out this experiment.]

Nevertheless, despite such brilliant suc-
cesses of the atomic and kinetic hypotheses
there were a few physicists and chemists
who as late as 1900 doubted the necessity of
the assumption of the discrete or particle
structure of matter. Indeed, at the World's
Scientific Congress held in St. Louis in 1903

37

TIME, MATTER, AND VALUES

a symposium on this topic was held and
Professor Ostwald came from Germany to
champion the view that the facts of ob-
servation could be as well accounted for by
the continuous theory of the structure of
matter as by the discrete or particle theory.

By 1916, however, in view as he frankly
said of two newly discovered facts, Ost-
wald himself publicly abandoned his posi-
tion and with this the advocacy of the theory
of the continuous structure of matter en-
tirely disappeared. These two new facts were,
first, the beautiful quantitative exploration of
the facts of the so-called Brownian move-
ments, and second the definite proof of the
discrete structure of electricity. These two
advances are important enough to justify
giving them more detailed consideration.

In 1905 Einstein was one of three men
who had the penetration to generalize the
conclusion reached above that at a given tem-
perature all kinds of gas molecules possess
the same mean kinetic energy of agitation
38

NEW IDEAS ABOUT MATTER

and thus to find the interpretation of the
well known facts of the rapidly irregular
Brownian movements of small particles sus-
pended in liquids or gases in the general
assumption that at a given temperature all
bodies surrounded by gases or liquids, and
hence free to move about in them, possess
precisely the same mean energy of agitation
or random movement as does a molecule of
a gas.

This assumption was a natural enough one
to make. Indeed, if, as the foregoing ev-
idence indicates, nature is so constituted that
the equality of temperature of different gas-
eous substances means that the molecules of
these substances, whether they are as light as
hydrogen or a hundred times that massive,
as in the case of mercury, are knocking
about and jostling against their neighbors
with a given mean energy of random motion
which is quite independent of the mass of
the jostling particle and determined only by
temperature, then it is clearly to be expected
39

TIME, MATTER, AND VALUES

that this will also be true when the mole-
cules associate themselves together into larger
aggregates like dust specks or minute par-
ticles of smoke or oil or water. But whether
it is to be expected or not, in any case up to
1905 no one had been intelligent or able
enough to make, and to work out the con-
sequences of, this altogether general assump-
tion that! any particle of any size immersed
in a fluid, whether it were the minutest of
existing atoms or an object as big as a house,
would be endowed, if only it had a given
temperature, with one and the same average
energy of jostling motion. It is to be noted,
however, that since the energy of motion is
governed by the formula l / 2 mv 2 , if m the
mass is in one case a billionfold that in an-
other case the amount of movement as repre-
sented in the v* term must be reduced a bil-
lionfold so that no visible motion of objects
big enough to be seen with the naked eye was
to be expected, for such objects would con-
tain a million billion molecules at least, and
40

NEW IDEAS ABOUT MATTER

hence their hypothetical trembling motions
would be much too small to be visible. On
the other hand, a speck just large enough to
be visible in a very high power microscope,
for example, might be expected to be seen
jostling about just like a molecule, but of
course with the scale of its motion enor-
mously reduced.

This was then the qualitative explanation
of the century-old riddle of the Brownian
movements, a phenomenon discovered in
1815 by a Dr. Browne while observing with
a high power microscope very minute par-
ticles suspended in liquids. But Einstein's
quantitative prediction was that the mean
kinetic energy of agitation of these particles
should be exactly the same as the approx-
imately known energy of agitation of a gas
molecule. When this general prediction
was carefully tested between 1908 and 1912
by carefully quantitative measurements on
the Brownian movements both in liquids
and in gases in liquids by Perrin in Paris

TIME, MATTER, AND VALUES

and in gases by Fletcher and Millikan in
Chicago the observed mean measurements
agreed accurately with the calculations, and
the discrete or particle hypothesis thus gained
another very strong support.

The last and clinching discovery which
completely converted Ostwald was the def-
inite proof in 1910 of the discrete or unitary
character of electricity. The evidence here
is so direct and unambiguous that it deserves
especial attention in this lecture, particularly
because of a later use which will be made
of it. In the so-called oil-drop experiment,
in which the electron the ultimate unit of
electrical charge was isolated and its charge
accurately measured, one single electron is
caught alone, and at will, on an oil droplet
no more than two ten-thousandths of a mil-
limeter in radius. This oil droplet is made
to float in air between two metal plates M
and N (Figure 5) half an inch apart and so
arranged that they can be attached one to
the positive pole and one to the negative pole

42

NEW IDEAS ABOUT MATTER

FIG. 5. A, atomizer through which the oil spray is blown
into the cylindrical vessel D. G, oil tan{ to f^eep the tem-
perature constant. M and N circular brass plates, electrical
field produced by throwing on io,ooo-volt battery B. Light
from arc lamp a after heat rays are removed by passage
through w and d, enters chamber through glass window g
and illuminates droplet p between plates M and N through
the pinhole in M. Additional ions are produced about p by
X-rays from the bulb X.

of a 10,000 volt battery. The oil droplet
there floating is rendered visible as a bright
star by a powerful beam from an arc light
coming in through the water cells w d in-
serted to absorb the heat from the arc. With
the aid of the strong electrical field produced
between the plates by this battery the exact
43

TIME, MATTER, AND VALUES

instant at which an electron jumps on or off
the oil droplet under the influence of the
X-rays from Z can be seen distinctly and
accurately.

When such a single electron jumps off the
oil droplet, thus leaving it completely un-
charged, it fails entirely to respond to the
application of the electric field and the ob-
server knows that he is then observing a
completely discharged or neutral droplet.
But the instant that a new electron jumps on
again the oil droplet instantly responds to
the field and takes on a speed that is char-
acteristic of the charge of one electron upon
this particular droplet in such a field.

Nothing intermediate between this speed
and zero speed is ever obtained, but when
two or three or four electrons jump upon
the same drops the speeds have the exact
values i, 2, 3, 4, etc., times the smallest ob-
served speed. In other words, there is noth-
ing statistical about the charge of an electron.
Each electron possesses just that charge and

44

NEW IDEAS ABOUT MATTER

no more and no less within the limits of ob-
servational accuracy in measuring speeds,
which is actually less than one per cent.

This experiment is practically equivalent
to seeing one individual electron. The ob-
server does not see the electron's legs move
as it springs on or off the droplet, but he
knows just as well as if he did see the elec-
tron itself the exact instant at which it jumps
on or off by the instantaneous change in
speed produced by that act, so that there can-
not be the slightest doubt in this experiment
that the electron is a discrete particle of elec-
tricity which may sit, and often actually
does sit, alone on a droplet of a diameter of
the order of a ten-thousandth of a millimeter.
From the measured charge of that electron,
too, all the weights of all the atoms of which
the universe is built can be at once accurately
computed and these weights check, too, with
the results of other less accurate methods of
getting at them, so that Ostwald saw at
once that the discrete structure of matter

45

TIME, MATTER, AND VALUES

followed at once from the discrete structure
of electricity.

Since about 1913, then, the discrete or par-
ticle structure of both electricity and matter
has become practically universally recog-
nized, and the theory of a continuous as op-
posed to a discrete structure has entirely
disappeared. Indeed, nothing more beauti-
fully simplifying has ever happened in the
history of science than the whole series of
discoveries culminating about 1914 which
finally brought practically universal accept-
ance to the theory that the material world
contains but two fundamental entities,
namely, positive and negative electrons, ex-
actly alike in charge, but differing widely
in mass, the positive electron now usually
called a proton being 1850 times heavier
than the negative, now usually called simply
the electron. The atom of hydrogen, the
lightest element, contains just one proton
which holds circulating about it one neg-
ative electron, the two constituting thus a
46

NEW IDEAS ABOUT MATTER

neutral system. The next heavier element,
helium atomic weight 4 has a nucleus in
which four protons are held together by two
electrons and the other two electrons re-
quired to make the atom neutral are circu-
lating around the nucleus. All the heavier
elements, of which there are just 92, count-
ing hydrogen and helium, are similarly now
known quite definitely to be built up out of
protons and electrons, the atomic weight 238
in the case of the heaviest one, uranium, giv-
ing the number of protons in the nucleus,
and the so-called atomic number, 92 in the
case of uranium, giving the difference be-
tween the number of protons and electrons
within the nucleus and therefore the number
of negatives which must be held circulating
about the nucleus to make the whole atom a
neutral system.

As the evidence for the foregoing point of
view became more and more convincing it
looked as though the job of physics, namely,
the job of finding out the nature of the

47

TIME, MATTER, AND VALUES

physical world, was approaching completion
and that the particle theory of the structure
of matter had been placed in an impregnable
position.

But in all the foregoing I have said noth-
ing about the physics of the ether, which
during the nineteenth century had been be-
coming more and more important, quite as
important as the physics of matter, since it
embraced the whole of the fields of light and
heat and a large part of that of electricity.
And during the nineteenth century, parallel
with these discoveries as to the atomic nature
of matter, a continuous theory as opposed to
a particle theory of ethereal or radiant-energy
phenomena had been growing stronger and
stronger. Let me trace its history as I have
already done that of the theory of matter.

Forgetting as above Greek pronounce-
ments because they were so wholly spec-
ulative, the first real "light on light" came
with Newton's splitting up of white light
about 1666 A.D. into the spectrum, and his

NEW IDEAS ABOUT MATTER

study of other phenomena of light and color.
All these experiments he interpreted, pri-
marily because of the facts of the straight-
line propagation of light, in terms of a
projected corpuscle or particle theory, while
his Dutch contemporary, Huygens, im-
pressed by the similarities between sound
and light, advocated a wave theory of light.
Nothing further either decisive or even in-
teresting happens in this field until the
year 1800 A.D. when the physicist Thomas
Young in England performs a new and cru-
cial experiment which starts the wave theory
of light upon a century qf_g^traordinjary tri
umphs. This experiment of Young's showed
that in reality there is no such thing as the
straight line propagation of light, but that
light is bent around an edge or is diffracted
into the region of the geometrical shadow
just as is sound, the sole difference, so far as
this point is concerned, being that light has a
wave length but about a millionth that of
ordinary sound and for that reason alone is
49

TIME, MATTER, AND VALUES

more largely destroyed by interference be-
yond the limits of the geometrical shadow
than is sound, and thus appears to be a more
nearly straight-line-propagation phenomenon
than does sound. Young's actual experi-
ment was very simple. It is illustrated in
Figure 6. The light from a remote slit goes
through two small slits A and B parallel to
the original slit but perpendicular to the
plane of the paper and there is found on the
screen a series of light bands at P, R, etc.,
with dark bands in between them. If light

FIG. 6. Young's Experiment. A wave passes through
the two gaps A and B. P is equidistant jrom A and B,
and the waves reinforce one another there. Q is half a
wave-length nearer to B than A, and the waves, being
there in opposite phases, cancel out. At R, which is a
whole wave-length nearer to B than A, the waves rein-
force one another again.

5

NEW IDEAS ABOUT MATTER

is a wave motion like sound, then at a point
P at which the distance AP is the same as
BP the two waves, one from A and one from
B, will reinforce each other and the intensity
of the light at P will thus be the sum of the
two equal intensities of the waves from A
and B. But at a point Q, for which the dis-
tance AQ is a half wave length greater than
BQ, the two waves will be in opposite phase
as shown and will completely destroy each
other. Again, at R where AR is a whole
wave length greater than BR the two waves
will again unite in the same phase and rein-
force each other so that the diffraction pat-
tern on the screen will be a series of light
and dark bands. Exactly this pattern is ob-
served in Young's experiment. It is clear
that the distance between P and R is in-
creased as the wave length is increased, since
the position of R is determined by AR-BR = *
where \ represents the wave length of the
light used. Hence the diffraction pattern
will be a series of lines very close together

TIME, MATTER, AND VALUES

and close to P if the wave length is very
small, while the lines will be broad, far apart
and extend far above and below P, into the
limits of the geometrical shadow, if the wave
length is large. If the two slits A and B are
replaced by a series of many equally spaced
slits the diffraction pattern is actually un-
modified save that the points P, R, etc., be-
come sharp images of the original slit, etc.,
instead of merely broad light bands shading
off gradually into darker spaces between
them. If the screen AB is replaced by a
handkerchief, for example, in which the
openings run in two directions at right
angles, and if a point source, like an arc
light is observed through this handkerchief
the diffraction pattern actually becomes a
whole series of images of A. One can usually
see nine strong ones and many weaker ones.
Any one can repeat substantially this experi-
ment of Young's by holding in front of one
eye a handkerchief and looking through it
at a distant arc light or other point source.
52

NEW IDEAS ABOUT MATTER

The openings in the handkerchief then cor-
respond to A, B, etc., and the retina of the
eye becomes the screen on which the diffrac-
tion pattern is observed.

This experiment was quite uninterpretable
on any corpuscular theory. It seemed to be
interpretable only on a wave theory and it
actually convinced the world of the general
correctness of the wave theory of light, and
during the next hundred years there devel-
oped an enormous and beautifully consistent
body of knowledge which we called the
physics of the ether. It incorporated suc-
cessively into itself first light, then heat, then
the whole of wireless waves, then ultraviolet
light, then X-rays, then cosmic rays, all of
these being successively and definitely shown
to be phenomena of exactly the same sort
save for the one element of wave length,
which moves continuously from exceedingly
long values in wireless waves up through the
progressively shorter wave lengths of heat,
light, ultraviolet, X-rays, gamma rays to cos-
53

TIME, MATTER, AND VALUES

mic rays of unbelievably short wave length
and almost infinite frequency. The fre-
quency of visible light is a hundred million
times that of ordinary wireless waves of 50
meters wave length, while the frequency of
the cosmic rays is a hundred million times
that of visible light.

So the nineteenth century actually built up
for us two different worlds, one the world of
matter composed of discrete particles and
the other the world of ether physics gov-
erned by the principle of continuity with its
wave interpretations, and we had criteria by
which we could tell to which world a given
phenomenon belonged. Thus the beta rays
and the alpha rays from radio-active sub-
stances, for example, were found to be de-
flectable by a magnetic field as they should
be if they consist of streams of electrically
charged particles, whereas light and gamma
rays from radium were completely uninflu-
enced by a magnetic field (see Figure 7), a
characteristic possessed by all ether rays.

54

NEW IDEAS ABOUT MATTER

oc

FIG. 7. This figure illustrates the difference in the behaviors
in a magnetic field of alpha, beta, and gamma rays from
radium. The lines of force of the magnetic field are sup-
posed to run perpendicularly to the page. The alpha rays,
heavy and positively charged, are deflected in one direction,
the light negatively charged beta rays in the other, while
the gamma rays are lif(c light in being entirely uninfluenced
by the magnetic field.

Hence alpha and beta rays took their places
as streams of projected material particles,
while light, which was not deflected by a
magnetic field and which showed these dif-
fraction effects, was certainly an ethereal
phenomenon, and in 1912 X-rays and gamma
rays were definitely thrown into the field of

55

TIME, MATTER, AND VALUES

ether physics by Laue's experiments, which
showed not merely that these rays are unin-
fluenced by a magnet, but also that diffrac-
tion patterns just like those produced when
light goes through a handkerchief could be
obtained by passing X-rays, and later gamma
rays, through a crystal lattice, essentially like
a handkerchief, except that the openings are
very much closer together in a crystal than
in a handkerchief. The wave length of X-
rays was computed from the spacing of the
crystal lattice and of course came out very
small compared with the wave length of
light, in fact about a thousandth as great.

So long as the two worlds the particle
world and the ether world could be kept
separate all went well, but these two worlds
have recently begun to rebel at being kept
apart and the rebellion has now become ter-
ribly interesting and important. Let me
give the steps in the rebellion and then the
results to date.

First, in the working out of the so-called

56

NEW IDEAS ABOUT MATTER

photoelectric effect in the first two decades
of the twentieth century we found definitely
that waves were acting in this effect not like
waves but like bullets of light or light-darts,
like particles. The significant experiment
consists in measuring the energy with which
an electron is jerked out of a metal surface,
for example, first by light of varying inten-
sity but constant frequency, and second by
light of different frequencies or colors. By
1916 the experimental study of this effect
had shown definitely that the light-dart or
photon theory alone here holds. In other
words, in this effect the energy of the light
wave travels through space as a localized
bundle, i.e., as a discrete particle, and the
amount of energy in each light-dart or light
particle is proportional to its frequency "
or is equal to hv, in which " represents
frequency and h is the so-called Planck's
constant. This result was first obtained
sharply and altogether unambiguously in
experiments done in the Ryerson Laboratory

57

TIME, MATTER, AND VALUES

in 1913-1914, though as early as 1900 Lenard
in Germany had made experiments which
suggested this light-dart theory and Einstein
had definitely postulated it in 1905. In these
1914 experiments the energy with which
electrons were jerked out of the alkali met-
als by monochromatic light of different
wave length was accurately measured and
found to be completely independent of the
intensity of the light, an amazing result
since the energy of a wave necessarily dies
down with distance from the source. Also
equally amazingly, these photoelectric ex-
periments showed that the energy of elec-
trons jerked out of metals by light of differ-
ent colors, i.e., of different frequencies, were
directly proportional to the incident fre-
quency, blue light throwing out electrons
with about twice the energy of red light.
These results could apparently only be inter-
preted on the assumption that bundles of
light energy hold together as they shoot
through space, and that each individual
58

NEW IDEAS ABOUT MATTER

light-dart carries an energy which is propor-
tional to its frequency.

To find thus experimentally that the en-
ergy of a single ray of light was independent
of its intensity and proportional to its fre-
quency was terribly upsetting to all existing
theories. When these facts were first brought
to light they seemed the most amazing con
tradiction ever revealed in the history of
physics. Then after the war we found by
new experiments by de Broglie in France
and Ellis in England that the same results
hold for X-rays and for gamma rays. Fig-
ure 8 is an actual photograph which shows
clearly this relationship in the case of X-rays.
i

\ \ X-rays

\ .. '*" '

. *% \

s

/

1

FIG. 8. Long traces with large forward component. Sphere
traces. Cylindrical X-ray beam, 0.5 mm. in diameter, has
traversed 8 x /o 8 cm. copper. Final pressure ig cm.

59

TIME, MATTER, AND VALUES

The X-ray beam shoots through the air
chamber from the right and jerks in suc-
cession four electrons out of the molecules of
the air. That these electrons all possess the
same energy, hv, can be proved by measur-
ing the total length of each track, or better,
the total number of ions produced by each.
That these ethereal light-darts possess mo-
mentum too is indicated by the fact that
they drive the electrons forward in the direc-
tion in which they themselves are going.
Lately we have found by actual photographs
of cosmic rays, taken in the Norman Bridge
Laboratory, that they, too, act like light-
darts. There seems to be no uncertainty
about it. Also in the year 1923, A. H. Comp-
ton proved definitely that when such a light-
dart, now called a photon, hits a free electron
the laws of encounter that govern the im-
pact of two billiard balls is obeyed, thus giv-
ing another proof of the particle as distinct
from the wave theory of light. When we
are dealing, then, with elementary processes,
60

NEW IDEAS ABOUT MATTER

such as encounters between one individual
light-dart and an electron, ether waves al-
ways act like discrete particles or bullets of
energy shot through space with the speed of
light. But how could this be reconciled with
interference experiments like Young's ? No-
body could see the answer. Maybe the phys-
ical world is not so simple after all.

But now we come to the most amazing
discovery of all. During the last four years
some new experiments have been performed,
first by Davidson and Germer at the Bell
Laboratories in America, then by G. P.
Thomson in England, then by Otto Stern in
Hamburg. These may be summarized in
the two statements, first, that a narrow
stream of particles like electrons can be made
to show all the interference effects of a nar-
row beam of light or of X-rays; and second,
that a linear stream of atoms following one
another in very rapid succession also show
the precise interference effect exhibited by
light rays. In other words, not only may
61

TIME, MATTER, AND VALUES

waves be made to show all the properties of
particles but particles may also be made to
show all the properties of waves. This is
one of the most amazing situations ever en-
countered by any science. That it is com-
pletely established experimentally is shown
by the three following pairs of photographs.
The first, Figure 9, is Frederick and Knip-
ping's diffraction pattern obtained by passing
X-rays (ether waves) through a crystal of
zinc blend parallel to the trigonal axis of
the cubic crystal. Its mate, Figure 10, on the
other hand, is the diffraction pattern ob-
tained by G. P. Thomson in 1928, by pass-
ing a beam of electrons, that is a beam of
cathode ray particles, through a very thin
film of crystallized aluminum.

Again, Figure n, shows another of Fred-
erick and Knipping's X-ray diffraction pat-
terns obtained by passing X-rays through a
crystal of zinc blend parallel to a cubic axis
of the crystal, while Figure 12 is a quite sim-
ilar diffraction pattern obtained by S. Ki-
62

FIG. 9. Diffraction pattern produced by passing a
narrow beam oj X-rays (ether waves) through a
thin crystal oj zinc blend parallel to the trigonal
axis.

Fie. 10. Diffraction pattern produced by passing a narrow
beam of electrons (particles) through a thin film of crystal-
lized aluminum.

NEW IDEAS ABOUT MATTER

kuchi of Japan, by passing a beam of elec-
trons (particles) through a very thin mica
crystal.

Finally, Figure 13 is an X-ray, that is, an
ether-wave, diffraction figure such as is al-
ways produced by a powder or a thin film in
which the elementary minute crystals have
not a regular, but rather a wholly random
orientation, and Figure 14, is the correspond-
ing diffraction pattern obtained when a
beam of electrons (particles) passes through
thin gold foil in which the rolling or beating
has given the elementary crystals again a
random distribution.

Why have these contradictions arisen?
Can we sec even dimly a physical signif-
icance behind them? For, to the experi-
mental physicist, at least, this world is at
bottom more than a world of equations or
even of ideas. Some external physical things
are happening and we cannot rest indef-
initely content with two types of physical
interpretation of the same phenomena that

63

TIME, MATTER, AND VALUES

seem to be mutually exclusive. The ultimate
elementary processes which constitute light
cannot be both waves and corpuscles. Which
are they really? and what kind of legexde-
main has nature played upon us to make
them seem otherwise? How "did the rab-
bit actually get into the hat?" The only
way I can see out of the contradiction is to
assume that all microscopic or elementary
processes, whether they are processes of
matter physics or of ether physics are at bot-
tom discrete-particle-processes, the four types
of units involved being (i) elementary units
of electrical charge, (2) elementary units of
mass, (3) elementary units of radiant en-
ergy, and (4) elementary units of action
(called Planck's h units). Only when large
numbers of these units are involved do we
get over into the field of continuous proc-
esses of which waves constitute one of the
best of examples. In other words, all ap-
parently continuous phenomena represent
statistical or mean behaviors of elementary
64

FIG. ir. Diffraction pattern produced by passing a
narrow beam of X-rays (ether wares) through zinc
blend parallel to a cubic axis.

FIG. 12 is the (jititc similar dijjraitwn pattern ob-
tained by passing a beam of electrons (particles)
through a thin mica crystal.

NEW IDEAS ABOUT MATTER

particles, in precisely the same way as the
temperature of a mass is the mean kinetic
energy of its particles, which obviously does
not imply that every individual molecule has
that energy. We practically know, for ex-
ample, that when one single electron hits a
fluorescent screen it makes at a particular
point one single scintillation. When, how-
ever, a lot of them go through two holes
side by side for some reason they distribute
themselves so as to make the wave pattern
which we actually observe.

The question as to just why they do this
is most interesting and the present effort of
physicists is to find the reason in the Heisen-
berg uncertainty principle, i.e., an uncer-
tainty, or better an incorrectness, in the
assumption of an absolute length and an
absolute time. The probability function
which in some cases comes out of the Heis-
enberg equation has already succeeded in
predicting the wave equation which yields
the observed interference pattern, all of
65

TIME, MATTER, AND VALUES

which seems to show that the long tyranny
of the two absolute despots space and time
is at an end, and the rule of the new joint
concept of space-time is better suited to our
modern conditions.

But this history that I have tried to recount
shows that we are moving on and on con-
tinuously in our knowledge of the behavior
of the physical world. We first discover the
laws that govern the interaction of large
bodies, Newton's laws, and these are just as
valid now for large bodies as they ever were;
then we discover the laws that hold in all
the large-scale phenomena of ether physics,
and they too are just as valid now as ever for
these large-scale phenomena. Then we dis-
cover methods of pushing our researches
farther into the field of elementary processes
and a whole group of new laws appears not
irreconcilable with the first but containing
the first as limiting cases as the number of
units involved becomes large. In other
words, when we are buying sand by the ton
66

Fie 13. X-ray (or ft her- wave) diffraction fig-
ure produced hy a powder or thtn foil in
which the elcmcntttry minute crystals are dis-
tributed at random.

FIG. 14. The corresponding diffraction pattern obtained
when a beam of electrons (particles) passes through thin
gold joils in which the elementary gold crystals again
have a random distribution.

NEW IDEAS ABOUT MATTER

we do not even need to know that it con-
tains grains. And so long as we are merely
building houses we get along all right with-
out the knowledge of the granular structure.
But fortunately the mind of man is not con-
tent with merely building houses. It seeks
to "faow so that life may be enriched."

67

CHAPTER III

NEW IDEAS ABOUT VALUES

JUST a hundred years ago my grand-
father, one Daniel Franklin Millikan,
decided to leave the farm in the Berkshire
hills near Becket, Massachusetts, which for
seventy years had been the ancestral home
of the Millikan family and to try his fortune
in the newly opened and less rocky lands of
the Western Reserve in Ohio. There my
father was born in 1834, an( ^ when he was
four years old the family took its Lares and
Penates, its horses and cattle, and treked

A-

westward again in covered wagons to settle
this time on the banks of the Rock River
not far from the present town of Sterling,
Illinois.

I mention this because the conditions of
that migration, the motives prompting it, the
mode of travel of the emigrants, their va-
68

NEW IDEAS ABOUT VALUES

rious ways of meeting their needs and solv-
ing their problems, their whole outlook upon
life, were extraordinarily like those which
existed four thousand years earlier, when
Abraham trekfed westward from Ur of the
Chaldees. In a word, the changes that have
occurred within the past one hundred years,
not only in the external conditions under
which the average man, at least in this west-
ern world, passes his life on earth, but in his
superstitions, such as the taboo on the num-
ber thirteen or on Friday-sailings, in his
fundamental beliefs, in his philosophy, in
his conception of religion, in his whole
world outlook, are probably greater than
those that occurred during the preceding
four thousand years all put together.

It is my purpose tonight to try to analyze
these changes, to see what fundamental in-
fluences have brought them about, and to
let you know what, from the standpoint of
one particular physicist, they seem to mean
in their relation to his own life and conduct
69

TIME, MATTER, AND VALUES

and, perhaps to some extent, to the life and
conduct of all of us. I realize full well that
this is a bit presumptuous since the very fact
of my doing it may seem to imply that my
analysis is better than some one else's and
my conclusions sounder. This will be true
only in so far as my analysis and my con-
clusions relate to the field in which I may
have some special knowledge, but I know of
no way in which we can improve our com-
mon outlook save by this swapping of ideas
or in some way getting a composite of the
pictures taken from our individual special-
ized standpoints, and seeing what comes out
as of common significance. If you will look
upon what I have to say, then, merely as my
personal outlook, to be compared with many
others before any common judgment can
be reached, this talk will have served its
purpose.

These stupendous changes of the last cen-
tury in our physical lives, our beliefs, and
our motivations have all been brought about
70

NEW IDEAS ABOUT VALUES

in the last analysis, I think, by new knowl-
edge of the universe around us. Some of
this knowledge is in fact centuries old, but
new in the sense that it has heretofore been
the knowledge of the few, and has only re-
cently become widely spread and hence in-
fluential in modifying belief and conduct.
This spreading has itself been due to the
stupendous extension and improvement of
the means of disseminating knowledge, an
improvement which is itself a part of the
new knowledge. I shall, therefore, divide
my subject into two parts and discuss, first,
the origin of the knowledge, the dissemina-
tion of which has recently been so signif-
icant, and second, some very recent advances
the knowledge of which is not yet widely
spread, but which may be most significant,
both for the present, and for the future.

In a paper published in a volume by Scrib-
ners under the title, Science and the New
Civilization, I have classified the three great
elements in human progress as

7 1

TIME, MATTER, AND VALUES

1. The Discovery of the Golden Rule a
supreme contribution of moral and re-
ligious thinking, and therefore properly
called, I think, a contribution of reli-
gion to the progress of mankind;

2. The Discovery of the idea of Natural
Law or of the Uniformity of Nature;
and

3. The Discovery of the Idea of Progress
or of Age-long growth or Evolution.

The last two may be fused into one under
the title, the discovery of what I shall call
"the scientific method," since both of them
arose from it, so that in my classification re-
ligion and science become the two great sis-
ter forces which have pulled and are still
pulling mankind onward and upward. And
the two are necessarily intimately related, for
the primary idea in religion lies in the single
word "ought" the sense of duty being un-
derneath all religion, while what is duty,
that is, what particular line of conduct is
actually best for society as a whole must be

NEW IDEAS ABOUT VALUES

determined by science; in other words, this
is a question of knowledge or intelligence,
rather than of conscience. I am thus using
the two words conscience and knowledge as
at least very closely related to the words reli-
gion and science.

But for the sake of what follows, I wish to
go a step farther, for someone asks, where
does the idea of God come in? Isn't it a
part of religion? Yes, I think it is, because
I do not see how there can be any sense of
duty, or any reason for altruistic conduct
which is entirely divorced from the convic-
tion that moral conduct or what we call
goodness is somehow or other worth while,
that there is Something in the universe
which gives significance and meaning, call
it value if you will, to existence, and no such
sense of value can possibly be in mere lumps
of dead matter interacting according to
purely mechanical laws. Job saw thousands
of years ago the futility of finite man's at-
tempting to define God when he cried, "Can

73

TIME, MATTER, AND VALUES

man with searching find out God?" and,
similarly, wise men ever since have always
recognized their own ignorance and finite-
ness and have been content to stand in si-
lence and in reverence before Him. Einstein
in a recent article has written, "It is enough
for me to contemplate the mystery of con-
scious life perpetuating itself through all
eternity, to reflect upon the marvelous struc-
ture of the Universe which we can dimly
perceive, and to try humbly to comprehend
even an infinitesimal part of the intelligence
manifested in nature." I myself need no
better definition of God than that, and some
such idea is in all religion as a basis for the
idea of duty. So with these words of ex-
planation, I shall launch into my attempt to
present the new knowledge that has come to
us about the universe around us and its in-
fluence upon the living and thinking of our
times.

I think there can be no shadow of doubt
that the great characteristic feature of our

74

NEW IDEAS ABOUT VALUES

times, the one thing that distinguishes our
civilization from all that have preceded, is
the discovery of the scientific method and
the results that have followed upon its ap-
plication. That discovery was made some
three hundred years ago, but its cumulative
effects have come only within the last cen-
tury. But just what is the scientific method
and what was the change in mode of ap-
proach that Galileo so conspicuously em-
ployed and which resulted in what White-
head calls "the most intimate change in
outlook which the human race had yet en-
countered" ?

The method consisted in discarding all a
priori postulates about the nature of reality
and all complete philosophic schemes, such
as all the philosophers of the ancient world,
idealists and atomists alike^ had started with,
and quarrelled interminably over, discard-
ing, likewise, all intuitive axioms on the one
hand and authority on the other such as had
been the foundation of medieval scholas-

75

TIME, MATTER, AND VALUES

ticism, and appealing by the experimental
method, as Dampier-Whetham says in his
History of Science, "to the tribunal of brute
facts facts which bore no relation to any
philosophic synthesis then possible. Natural
science may use deductive reasoning at an
intermediate stage of its enquiries, and in-
ductive theories are an essential part of its
procedure, but primarily it is empirical, and
its ultimate appeal is to observation and ex-
periment. . . ." "It is not too much to say
that Galileo started modern physical science
on the course which has extended unbroken
to our own day. In a very real sense, he is
the first of the moderns: as we read his writ-
ings we instinctively feel at home, we know
that we have reached the method of experi-
mental science which still is in use today.
The old assumption of a complete and ra-
tionalized scheme of knowledge . . . has been
given up. Facts are no longer deduced from,
and obliged to conform with an authorita-
tive and rational synthesis as in scholas-
76

NEW IDEAS ABOUT VALUES

ticism, no longer are they given meaning,
thereby, as they were even in the mind of
Kepler. Each fact acquired by observation
and experiment is accepted as it stands, with
its immediate and inevitable consequences,
irrespective of the human desire to make the
whole of nature at once amenable to reason.
Concordances between the isolated facts ap-
pear but slowly, and the little spheres of
knowledge surrounding each fact come into
touch here and there, and perhaps coalesce
into larger spheres. The welding of all
knowledge, scientific or philosophical, into
an all embracing unity, if not seen to be for-
ever impossible, is relegated to the distant
future. Medieval scholasticism was rational;
modern science is in essence empirical. The
former worshipped the human reason acting
within the bounds of authority; the latter ac-
cepts brute facts whether reasonable or not."
Galileo, unlike some who followed him and
founded systems upon his work, like the
French encyclopaedists of the eighteenth cen-

77

TIME, MATTER, AND VALUES

tury, "was content to wait in acknowledged
ignorance upon questions that cannot be
answered by rash speculation or deduced
from philosophic systems. He confessed that
he knew nothing about the nature of force,
the cause of gravity, the origin of the Uni-
verse. Rather than express extravagances he
declared it better to pronounce that wise, in-
genious and modest sentence, 'I know not.' "

That is the method of science. Now what
has resulted from its application?

First, practically the whole of modern
material civilization in so far as it differs
from ancient civilizations. It is easy to trace
the pedigree of practically every modern in-
dustrial or scientific device back to the new
knowledge which Galileo's method and in-
deed his own experimental researches began
to bring to light. Let me give just two
illustrations.

For thousands, perhaps for tens of thou-
sands of years before his time, men had
pushed carts and pulled wagons, but not one
78

NEW IDEAS ABOUT VALUES

of them had any correct idea about the exact
relation between the force exerted and the
motion produced. This is just what he found
by studying the way his marbles acquired
velocity as they rolled down his inclined
plane. Without the formula, force equals
mass times acceleration, which came into the
knowledge of mankind through his work,
not a single steam engine, automobile, air-
plane, or any other power machine could be
designed today.

Further, it was precisely this formula
which seventy-five years later in the hands
of Newton made the discovery of the law of
gravitation possible, and with it the whole
development of celestial mechanics, the suc-
cesses of which have at last weaned the
whole world away from treating with any-
thing but ridicule "the village that voted the
earth was flat, flat as my hat, flatter than
that" (Kipling), and opened the eyes of the
world to the glories and the mysteries of
modern astronomy.

79

TIME, MATTER, AND VALUES

Again, through hundreds of thousands of
years, alike in the epochs of savagery and
barbarism, and in those of amazing Greek
and Latin civilizations, man had warmed
himself at his camp fire and his grate with-
out ever stopping to wonder what heat was;
or, if he wondered, he had no idea how to
set to work to find out. More than that, it
was impossible for him to find out before the
idea or concept of energy of molecular mo-
tion had been formulated, and this idea came
directly from Galilean and Newtonian me-
chanics. It was 1850 before the word "en-
ergy" as a sharply defined physical concept
came into use at all, and it was only then by
following exactly the method of Galileo and
also by using directly the results of his and
Newton's work that the foundations were
laid by Joule and Kelvin in England and by
Clausius and Helmholtz in Germany, for
the modern development of the steam en-
gine, which utilizes the relations between
80

NEW IDEAS ABOUT VALUES

heat and work, and which begot in its turn
the internal combustion engine.

In exactly the same way through Frank-
lin, Volta, Faraday, and Maxwell, all utiliz-
ing the method as well as the results of their
scientific ancestors, has the age of electricity
within my own life time been ushered in.
Also, the same method applied to the study
of the earth's crust with its fossil records of
age-long development from lower to higher
biological forms and the further study of
the anatomical relations between these forms
have brought to light brute facts which must
tell their own tale no matter what precon-
ceived philosophies or world- systems they
may encounter. This whole group of ob-
served facts about the universe around us is
what is responsible for the enormous change
in human outlook that has been character-
istic of our century. But when I talk about
change in human outlook I have left the
field of merely material changes and have
touched the second advance, more important
81

TIME, MATTER, AND VALUES

than the material one, which came as a re-
sult of the application of the scientific
method. Let me follow it a little farther.

Through all primitive thinking, and some
of it not so primitive, nature is regarded as
essentially capricious. Things happen be-
cause the God of the mountain, the forest,
the river, or the sea wills to have them hap-
pen, and that God is in general endowed
with practically all man's frailties. That
God's will can be supplicated, pleased, en-
raged, appeased, cajoled, but that it operates
in any systematic way or in accordance with
fixed principles which man by study can
come at least in part to understand, that was
an idea which, while it was adumbrated in
the Greek world, notably in the work of
Aristarchus of Samos, Archimedes of Syra-
cuse, and Hipparchus of Alexandria, was
after all practically without influence in hu-
man life before the real advent of the scien-
tific method in the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries. Galileo in establishing the laws
82

NEW IDEAS ABOUT VALUES

of force and motion assumed the principle
of uniformity and laid down regularities or
laws which made prediction of astronomical
events and of some terrestrial events a pos-
sibility. The continued and ever increasing
success of these predictions soon began in-
evitably to change men's thinking about the
fundamental nature of the universe. With
increasing knowledge, men's ideas of God,
the integrating factor in the universe, of
course began to change. The days of child-
like anthropomorphic conceptions began to
draw to a close, and mankind began to move
forward to a finer, bigger, more mature,
more satisfying conception. A God of
caprice and whim began to be replaced in
human thinking by a God who rules through
law, a universe which was not worth know-
ing because it could not be counted upon
began to be replaced by a nature which is
dependable and to some extent at least un-
derstandable, even controllable by man.
With the advent of this idea man began to
83

TIME, MATTER, AND VALUES

be no longer merely a plaything in the hands
either of blind fate or of a capricious deity,
but himself a vital agent in the march of
things. His conception of duty and there-
fore religion began to change. Under the
old conception his chief duty had been to
propitiate his God, hence monasteries, pen-
ances, withdrawal from the world, and all
that goes with them. Under the new con-
ception duty came to be to try to understand
God's laws, and to bring one life and the
lives of mankind in general into harmony
with them. Most important of all, in the old
days men had made a wholly artificial and
irrational distinction between the natural
and the supernatural. Events which were suf-
ficiently common and familiar were thought
of as natural, and events which were uncom-
mon and not understood were called super-
natural. The idea of the uniformity or
repeatability of events abolished completely
1 all such child-like distinctions. All events
without exception came to be worthy of
84

NEW IDEAS ABOUT VALUES

study and of attempts at understanding, be-
cause nature is assumed to be dependable,
not capricious. Familiarity or unfamiliarity
have nothing whatever to do with it. Call
all events natural if you will, or all super-
natural if you prefer, but forget, so says
Galileo's method, either one term or the
other. No wonder Whitehead called it "the
most intimate change in outlook the human
race had yet encountered." That is, I think,
what has brought about the stupendous
change in point of view of the past century.
And note well this, that practically all the
men who introduced these changes into hu-
man thought and life regarded themselves
as essentially religious men. Let me show
why I say that. Dampier-Whetham says in
his History of Science, "We must remember
that all competent men of science and al-
most all philosophers of the middle of the
seventeenth century looked on the world
from the Christian standpoint. The idea of
an antagonism between religion and science
85

TIME, MATTER, AND VALUES

is of a later date." Leonardo da Vinci, a cen-
tury earlier than Galileo, but completely
modern in his scientific viewpoint , though
not historically influential because he did not
publish his work ; which has only recently
come to light through the discovery of his
note book of him his biographer writes,
"His own philosophic position seems to have
been an idealistic pantheism, in the light of
which he saw everywhere the living spirit of
the universe. Yet with the fine balance of a
great mind he saw the good beneath the load
of inconsequent evil and accepted the essen-
tial Christian doctrine as an outward and
visible form for his inward spiritual life."
Or again take Newton, whose chief work, the
"Principia," Lagrange, the greatest of French
mathematical physicists, described as "the
greatest production of the human mind,"
and who called Newton himself not only
"the greatest genius that has ever existed"
but also, "the most fortunate, for" says he,
"there is but one universe, and it can happen
86

NEW IDEAS ABOUT VALUES

to but one man in the world's history to be
the interpreter of its laws." This same New-
ton wrote in his "Opticks," "The main Busi-
ness of Natural Philosophy is to argue from
phenomena without feigning hypotheses and
to deduce causes from effects, till we come
to the very first Cause, which certainly is not
mechanical." "To Newton," says Dampier-
Whetham, "God is imminent in nature."

Robert Boyle took essentially the same
position and JJir Francis Bacon, completely
modern and scientific in his viewpoint, says,
"I had as soon believe the fables of the Tal-
mud and El Koran, as to think that this uni-
versal frame is without a mind." That is
only another way of saying precisely what
Einstein said in the foregoing quotation.
Similar quotations might be made from
Franklin, Faraday, Kelvin, Maxwell, 1 Ray-

1 Mr. P. G. Tait, who writes for the Britannica the bi-
ographical article on Maxwell says therein, "Though per-
fectly free from envy or ill will he yet showed on fit occa-
sion his contempt for that pseudo-science which seeks for the
applause of the ignorant by professing to reduce the whole
system of the universe to a fortuitous sequence of uncaused
events."

8 7

TIME, MATTER, AND VALUES

leigh down to Eddington and Jeans of today,
all showing that while new and broader con-
ceptions come inevitably into philosophy and
religion as science advances, there has been
no conflict between the two as interpreted
by the best minds the world has produced.
Now this whole group of ideas which has
been developed by the world's thinkers and
leaders from the times of Leonardo da Vinci
and Galileo down, has become widely dis-
seminated in our western world relatively
recently, and has been the chief cause of the
change in intellectual outlook, in religious
thinking, too, that has taken place in Amer-
ica during the last century. Incidentally, it
is interesting to inquire, especially in view
of the statements that one so often hears,
whether the dissemination of scientific ideas
in this century has actually weakened the
hold of essential religion, or even organized
religion in the United States. Here are
some statistics which in a careful study, Mr.
Charles Stetzle published in 1928 in the
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NEW IDEAS ABOUT VALUES

World's Work^. In the year 1800 seven out
of every one hundred of the population in
the United States were Protestant church
members, in 1850 fifteen out of every hun-
dred, in 1900 twenty out of every hundred
and in 1926 twenty-six out of every one hun-
dred. In other words, during this nine-
teenth century when these changes were go-
ing on, the Protestant churches gained three
and a half times as fast as the population,
and during the last twenty years the Prot-
estant churches made a net increase in mem-
bership of 46% while the population in these
same twenty years gained by 36%. Other
extraordinarily interesting statistics have re-
cently been collected by Harvey C. Lehman
of Ohio State University and Paul A. Wilty
of Northwestern University and published
in the American Journal of Psychology,
October, 1931, vol. 43, pp. 664-678. These
men have gone through the 1926-27 edition
of Who's Who in America, and found that
25.4% of the group of 1,016 listed "distin-
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TIME, MATTER, AND VALUES

guished scientists" report themselves as
church members, or about the same as the
percentage of the whole population found
on the rolls of the Protestant churches. This
appears to show that in this particular scien-
tists are not appreciably different from the
rest of the population. But it is when the
authors divide up their material on the basis
of age that they find the most interesting
averages, namely that while only about 12%
of the oldest fourth of the scientists list
themselves as members of churches, 44% of
the youngest fourth so record themselves. In
other words, contrary to current opinions, in
so far as church membership is taken as a
criterion, it is the old birds that seem to need
watching, not the young ones. As the older
group disappears the figures indicate that the
coming years may be expected to show in-
creasing, rather than decreasing relations be-
tween the scientists and the churches.

There is no indication, then, in any of the
foregoing figures that in this country the
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NEW IDEAS ABOUT VALUES

march of science has undermined during the
past century, or is now undermining, prot-
estant religion, and it certainly should not
undermine any religion which is capable of
adapting itself to new conditions and keep-
ing in step with the march of knowledge,
and any other sort of religion probably ought
to be undermined.

As soon, however, as man, be he scientist
or cleric, deserts the method of science, a
clash may appear and there is one historic
instance of such a desertion which deserves
attention here.

The principles governing the motion of
inert bodies under the influence of their mu-
tual gravitational forces as worked out by
Galileo and Newton, were found sufficient
to explain all the majestic motions of the
heavenly bodies. These two minds were
great enough deliberately to refuse to build
up philosophies beyond the reach of their
observed facts, Newton himself pointing out
that the cause of his gravitational force re-
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TIME, MATTER, AND VALUES

mained unknown. When, however, the dis-
coveries of Galileo and Newton got over
into France, the French philosophers of the
eighteenth century, forgetting that the es-
sence of the scientific method lay in sticking
close to the observed facts and not asserting
knowledge beyond the range of observation,
yielded to the lure of such inclusive gen-
eralizations as had rendered Greek philos-
ophy impotent and proceeded to convert
Galileo's and Newton's science into a mechan-
ical philosophy in which the whole of the
past and future was calculable from the posi-
tions and motions of inert "material" bodies
and man became a machine.

This crude materialism, sometimes called
scientific but in its very method and essence
unscientific because universally assertive and
dogmatic, had an influence on the early his-
tory of this country, which borrowed much
of its thinking from eighteenth century
France, and while clear-thinking minds in
all countries refused to be stampeded by it,
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NEW IDEAS ABOUT VALUES

realizing the limitations of the scientific
method and differentiating sharply between
determinism in science as a convenient, in-
deed a necessary, working hypothesis, and
determinism as a general philosophy, yet "to
minds more logical than profound" the in-
ference from science to philosophy seemed
inevitable, and this movement continued
strong throughout the nineteenth century,
especially in Germany, until beginning with
the last decade of the nineteenth century ex-
perimental physics itself threw this philos-
ophy out of its house root and branch.

And here I come to the newer facts of the
universe around us which have quite re-
cently taught all physicists, and all mankind
I hope, that the road to fruitful effort lies
in sticking close to the scientific method
and avoiding extending generalizations into
fields beyond those in which experimental
observations have demonstrated their valid-
ity, the method of recognizing and being
guided by brute facts whether these fit into

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TIME, MATTER, AND VALUES

general philosophies or not. Eighteenth and
nineteenth century materialism assumed that
the universe might be interpreted in terms of
a fixed number of unchangeable atoms, and
then brute facts were found which showed
that some of these atoms were changing con-
tinuously into other atoms and the dogma
of the immutable elements was gone. Then
materialism assumed that the universe could
be accounted for in terms at least of the mo-
tions of "material" particles of some kind,
and then brute facts were found which
showed that matter could disappear into
radiant energy or ether waves, and the
dogma of the conservation of matter was
gone, and with it the excuse for the very
name materialism. Then, again, materialism
assumed that the universe could be accounted
for in terms of Galilean and Newtonian
mechanical laws, which in large-scale phe-
nomena had always been found to work.
Then brute facts were found having to do
with specific heats at low temperatures for
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NEW IDEAS ABOUT VALUES

example, where the laws of Galilean and
Newtonian mechanics simply did not work
at all and the dogma of the universality of
the mechanical laws was gone. Then ma-
terialism assumed the universality of the
electro-dynamic laws and presto a region
was found having to do with spectroscopic
and X-ray phenomena in which these did
not work and another dogma blew up. Then
materialistic philosophy asserted that light
must be ether waves or corpuscles. It was
inconsistent or unintelligible that it could be
both, and again brute facts appeared which
showed that, whether it was intelligible or
not, light acts at one and the same times like
both waves and corpuscles, and now every
physicist is accepting these apparently con-
tradictory facts and making the most of
them. Then materialism assumed that be-
cause the laws of interaction of bodies at
slow speeds had been verified they would
also hold for high speeds, and brute facts
appeared which denied the validity of this
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TIME, MATTER, AND VALUES

generalization and in the denial gave birth
to the theory of relativity.

Result, dogmatic materialism in physics is
dead! If we had all been as wise as Galileo
and Newton it would never have been born,
for dogmatism in any form violates the es-
sence of the scientific method, which is to
collect with an open mind the brute facts
and let them speak for themselves untram-
meled by preconceived ideas or by general
philosophies or universal systems.

Now, if anybody here is bothered by the
reconciliation of free will and determinism,
I shall be glad to state for him my own posi-
tion, as follows: Practical free will, or the
sense of responsibility, is to me a brute fact
given by direct experience. It is of course
true that, strictly speaking, the only absolute
knowledge that any of us has is the knowl-
edge of his own sensations, and my free
will is based upon that sort of knowledge.
Most of the so-called knowledge that we act
upon, including our scientific knowledge, is
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NEW IDEAS ABOUT VALUES

not of that sort. It is rather evidence that
by long experience of our own or of others
we have come to trust as a safe guide to con-
duct because within the range of such long
experience it has been found to work. The
hypothesis of determinism within the range
of macroscopic or large-scale physical phe-
nomena has been thus far found to work,
and it therefore represents such knowledge.
In certain microscopic or elementary proc-
esses its correctness even in purely physical
processes has been questioned by physicists.
I refer, of course, to the Heisenberg principle
of uncertainty, but this raises no questions
whatever with respect to any of the phenom-
ena of large-scale physics or its applications,
that is, these phenomena are consistent with
the working hypothesis of scientific deter-
minism as the physicist has always used it.
Metaphysical or philosophic determinism I
am not in the least interested in, because it
represents one of those sweeping generaliza-
tions, or assertions of universal validity even
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TIME, MATTER, AND VALUES

when fields are entered outside those within
which by a long process of prediction and
experimental check the principle in question
has been found to be a useful and dependable
working hypothesis. It is precisely at this
point, that is, in making such unwarranted
extensions of his laws, that the physicist has
stubbed his own toe over and over again
within the past forty years, and I think he
has now learned his lesson and will not make
that sort of mistake again. The dogma of
philosophic determinism has been adopted
by religious and unreligious groups alike, by
Calvinists and by French and German "ma-
terialists" (so-called). To me philosophic
determinism is a pure dogma of no partic-
ular interest to the man who has even
scented afar the scientific method. Scientific
determinism, as we use it in physics, is
merely a convenient working hypothesis,
certainly no more difficult to reconcile with
free will than are the wave properties of
electrons and photons difficult to reconcile

NEW IDEAS ABOUT VALUES

with their corpuscular properties. We phys-
icists have not yet reconciled in any physical
sense these apparently mutually exclusive
properties. We have merely kept our minds
humble, our consciousness of ignorance and
finiteness strong, and have bowed before
brute facts. A man may call himself a de-
terminist if he will, but if he at the same
time keeps his conscience, that is, his sense
of social responsibility, vigorously alive, he
is pretty certain to be an essentially religious
man, for "What doth the Lord thy God re-
quire of thee but to do justice, to love mercy,
and to walk humbly with thy God."

99